A new “Love Island” spinoff could be on the way from ITV America and Peacock.
During a discussion at Content London on Tuesday, ITV America CEO David George — who was instrumental in the U.S. sale of the hit U.K. reality dating format to CBS in 2018 — teased that he is currently in talks with Peacock about a new spinoff of the series. “Love Island,” which just had its biggest U.S. success yet with its sixth season, already has two spinoffs with “Love Island All Stars” and “Love Island Games.”
When asked about Comcast’s plan to break up Peacock owner NBCUniversal’s linear networks, George said: “What that separation told me is Peacock is the future because they kept Bravo, which supplies a ton of content into Peacock. And if you look at the branding, Peacock is meant to be fun and entertaining and that’s why it aligns with us so well … Actually, we are in conversations with them about a third spinoff to ‘Love Island,’ and that tells you how important that brand is to the streaming service.”
Peacock did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
At ITV America, George oversees ITV Entertainment, Leftfield Pictures, Sirens Media, Thinkfactory Media, High Noon Entertainment and Good Caper Content. During his tenure, he also developed the wildly successful reimagined “Queer Eye” series for Netflix and the award-winning survival series “Alone” for the History Channel.
George said “Love Island” has become a prime example of achieving both high volume and appointment viewing on a streaming service. “That really hasn’t been done in the marketplace before,” he said. “It became such a cultural zeitgeist that it was must-watch viewing on a streaming service … And that is a really, really critical thing that’s happening in the marketplace is these streamers are now starting to turn back into linear networks.”
Speaking about the current landscape as a whole, George underlined that you have to have “undeniable ideas” in order to get a show commissioned due to contraction. In fact, his biggest piece of advice for production companies was “look at your development slate and kill half of it.”
“There isn’t a market for the other half anymore,” he said. “It’s those top 10% of ideas that are really going to break through.”
